Monday, March 10, 2008

Andy Singer and Me at the 2008 Mpls Auto Show

Ken Avidor and Andy Singer may be the only people who got to the Minneapolis & St. Paul International Auto Show on bicycles.

"I have this thing with arriving at transportation things with a vehicle," said Avidor, a 52-year-old transit and bicycling advocate and cartoonist from Minneapolis.

Despite frigid temperatures, he turned down our offer of a lift Friday to the Minneapolis Convention Center to preview the nine-day car show, which opens today.

"Mainly, I hate being in a car," Avidor said. "It's a canned experience."

"All this space, and there's no bike stand," he muttered as he and Singer wheeled away from the front doors of the convention center to look for a pole to lock their bikes.

"The formaldehyde new car smell," said Singer as we walked into the convention center's biggest event, a half-million square feet of exhibit space covered with gleaming sheet metal.

Singer, a 42-year-old cartoonist from St. Paul, doesn't own a car.

But like Avidor, he knows a surprising amount about them, or at least how to draw them. His book, "CARtoons," is a critical look at the social and environmental impact of the automobile on society.

Avidor's "Roadkill Bill" comic looks at "cars, technology and philosophy from a viewpoint of a frequently squashed rodent." His graphic novel "Bicyclopolis" depicts a car-less "post-petroleum" future of 2076 populated by descendants of bike messengers and Civil War re-enactors.